No jumping into the shower when I woke up this morning as the house was only 65˚. I actually turned on the heat until the house got to 68˚ then I took my shower. When I opened the doors later, outside was warmer than inside. Gracie and I stood together looking out the front door. It is a favorite perch of hers, but there is usually nothing to see. Once in a while a cat strolls across the street and Gracie goes crazy. Someone walks a dog and Gracie barks and jumps. She doesn’t like other dogs except for her friend Cody. I doubt Gracie appreciated it, but the morning smelled sweet, of flowers and cut grass. It will be 70˚ today according to the paper.

Tonight my sister and I are doing The East Somerville Foodie Crawl. We get to go from restaurant to restaurant tasting theirs  wares. Many are ethnic including an African, South American and a few Mexican restaurants. One of the restaurants, Mount Vernon Restaurant and Pub, is where my father used to bring us, my mother, sister and I, for dinner when I’d visit for the weekend. They had a twin lobster special to which my dad was partial, actually so was I. We’ll stop there for memory’s sake.

I love connections. They prod the memory drawers. Once I went to a memorial mass for someone in East Boston. I was standing on the steps of the church when I looked across the street. All of a sudden I knew where I was. My great-grandmother and my grand-aunt used to live in a house facing the small park across from the church. I knew that house had narrow stairs going up to the second floor, and the kitchen was on the first floor. I thought of quarters as I always got one when I visited. My great-grandmother died when I was 10. She was 92.

When I drive down the road where there used to be train tracks, I remember the whistle and the clack of the train wheels on the rails. My grandparents lived down the street from those tracks, and I used to look out their front door to see the train. The tracks are gone, but the train-master’s house is still there. Because it is just a house now, I wonder if people notice it has a strange shape and hugs the track.

The long street I walked on back and forth from school for eight years has changed. Many of the houses are gone now, some replaced by apartments. The train tracks are long gone, but it is that old street of my childhood I remember best. I can’t help myself. When I drive it now, I think of what was and name out loud all the things that are gone.